Tag Archives: poet

Childhood

TRIGGER WARNING: This poem contains references to childhood trauma, gun violence, animal death and desecration, and disturbing imagery involving cruelty to animals. It reflects lived experience and may be distressing for some readers. Please read with care.

Apparently, it is not most people’s
experience to be shot at on a
summer morning before the heat
forces children indoors to rest.

I guess we thought it was a mostly
fair fight, since we were lobbing
rocks and they couldn’t hit moving
targets if their lives depended on it.

Two neighbor boys teamed up with
their boredom and a whole summer
of scheming to counter our riotous
fun they were not invited to join.

But they took it too far when they
unburied Daisy Bo Kay, our freshly
dead basset hound, and strung her up
in a tree hoping we’d find her corpse.

She didn’t do anything to deserve
such treatment, just sit and sigh,
howl when we got too rambunctious,
witness the strangeness of our survival.

My Son Trey

My son Trey, short for Trajectory, lives in a parallel universe. With my whiteness stirred in, he is a lighter-skinned miniature version of his father, right down to the little glasses that he’s needed since he started reading at the age of two. He stands in the driveway waiting for the school bus, swishing his skirts back and forth, and my heart aches because I know the teasing he will endure. He is a queen for the Living History Museum whose merits he and his father talked excitedly about while I made the costume, torn between pride that my son’s favorite person is a woman and the compulsion to pressure him to pick a man. This morning as I sip my tea in my present universe, tears spring unbidden at this memory. Here, my history-loving husband and I chose not to have Trey or any other children. Oh, how I miss my sweet boy.

You Ever Wonder?

You ever wonder how we keep from flying off this giant muffin when it’s going over 60,000 miles an hour? Like, a spaceship made of dirt and water, it’s outer skin nothing more than a layer of air holding all us guts in while screaming through space at 60,000 miles an hour. And any second another chunk of rock could slam into our bowling ball hot air balloon and we could shoot off like fireworks spraying out of a soda bottle at 60,000 miles an hour. Unless we’re more like a frisbee ‘cause we’re flat earthers and this giant paper plate planet is flinging and boomeranging around the sun at 60,000 miles an hour. Maybe the whole way to survive in this solar system is to keep moving as fast as you can, ‘cause if we stop, we die, and nobody wants to die, well, some people want to die, but not like that in a crash going 60,000 miles an hour. And think about it, these doctors are trying to slow us down with all these meds, making us walk around like zombies eating our own brains, drooling in our sleep, and slurring our speech ‘cause that’s supposedly better somehow, even though they should be smart enough to know that we have to keep the wheel spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning at least 60,000 miles an hour, or we’ll screech to a halt and scream forever like that Munch painting where the squiggledy guy is slapping both hands on his face like the Home Alone kid all because Krakatoa blew and burned and bled.

Wheelchair 1

Image created by Rebekah Marshall’s prompt using AI on Gencraft.

9 plastic spokes radiate from the center of

23-inch diameter fixed-position wheels

solid Urethane black tires worn to the rim

handrims, breaks, bearings, black steel, bolts

black vinyl handle grips with finger indentations

7-inch rotating wheels, axles, nuts, forks

padded vinyl arm rests, spacers, screws

blue vinyl seat, pillow to cushion the ride                                

Hole in the Ceiling

(Poem 276 for 2024 – I am writing a poem a day)

AI Generated image I prompted on Gencraft.com https://gencraft.ai/p/ue2v8M

There’s a hole
in the ceiling
that needs
to be fixed.

The leak
that caused the need
for the hole
has been repaired,
but the hole
remains.

I ponder that space
when the house
is quiet
and nothing else needs
my attention.

The naming of things
fascinates me,
and the fact that we have a word for the absence of something where another thing should be
gives me comfort.

It means
others have discovered
something missing
that needs to be there
and filled it with a name.

@Home Studio – 276th poem of the year

Runner ups for the Hole in the Ceiling photos to accompany my poem:

Bear

(Poem 195 for 2024 – I am writing a poem a day)

AI Generated image I prompted on Gencraft.com https://gencraft.ai/p/MsPzoq

Man or Bear, easy choice,
especially when my Bear
gives hugs and kisses and
is always happy to see me.

We’re the best of friends;
we understand each other.
Our weekly seal our bond,
my protector, my bodyguard.

She reminds me to use the
restroom when I need to,
to take care of myself and
simply enjoy time together.

@Home Studio – 195th poem of the year

Runner ups for the Bear photos to accompany my poem:

Uter-Us

(Poem 190 for 2024 – I am writing a poem a day)

AI Generated image I prompted on Gencraft.com https://gencraft.ai/p/Sa2iIv https://gencraft.ai/p/WKPxbw   https://gencraft.ai/p/pOcgWm

The uterus is a universe
of endometrial enchantment,
a whispering womb,
a reproductive realm,
a cervical sanctuary,
and the cradle of life;
the hormonal harmony
in that pelvic paradise
creates menstrual magic
from the ovarian orbit
and fallopian fantasy that
results in a cycle symphony

…until it becomes something else…

a pelvic painscape
due to hormonal havoc
that creates womb woes
due to cervical crisis,
ovaries who are outraged,
frustrated fallopian tubes,
endometrial eruptions,
menstrual mayhem,
cycles of chaos,
a fertility fiasco,
and the reproductive riot
that brings only destruction.

@Home Studio – 190th poem of the year

Runner ups for the Uterus photos to accompany my poem:

Bloody Mary

(Poem 189 for 2024 – I am writing a poem a day)

AI Generated image I prompted on Gencraft.com https://gencraft.ai/p/YhrjGf

Catoptromancy
Dark room
Single candle
Running water
Spin 3 times
Look in the mirror
Ghostly corpse
Chanting her name
Bloody Mary
Bloody Mary
Bloody Mary

 @Home Studio – 189th poem of the year

Runner ups for the Bloody Mary photos to accompany my poem:

Coffee Cacophony

(Poem 187 for 2024 – I am writing a poem a day)

AI Generated image I prompted on Gencraft.com https://gencraft.ai/p/a9RJoh

You doin’ ok?
the barista asks someone looking at the menu
You’ve got to be hot because I’m hot
my husband says to me
Unidentifiable ethnic-sounding earth music plays
over the speakers chanting comforting spells
A soprano’s laugh bubbles up above all the other sounds
I’m fine
a tenor responds to someone who asks
My husband whispers or raps or sings to himself
perhaps he is reading out loud, it could be any of the above
because he is rarely silent for long
You’ve lost one of your lenses
a woman says to the elderly man she cares for
I know, he says
does she think he is unaware that he can only half-see?
freeway
I was trying to draw you
spiral
London Fog
to be clear
I think we all know
it’s a reservoir
keep going, Dude
really hammer it home
when I’m on stage
I’m not racist or homophobic
not on purpose
there is a monster
how cute
Chai
Hello
A blender and cups being bussed are the percussive elements that were missing.
Tea-Jasmine
Someone knocks loudly on the restroom door
one-two-three-four in quick succession
and a phone whistles
it just got real

@Genuine Joe’s – 187th poem of the year

Runner ups for the coffee shop photos to accompany my poem: